family. ‘It’s a full-time job, after all, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘Tell me about it,’ Wendy said. In retrospect, Vince could see that his wife had inherited her mother’s predisposition to martyrdom.
He had castigated himself for not bringing better wine but was relieved in the end because Steve made a big deal out of the ‘Pommard, 2011’ he was decanting, even though to Vince it tasted like any old red you could have grabbed off the shelf in Tesco’s.
‘And her, Sophie,’ Wendy said disdainfully (no sisterhood for Wendy), ‘she was wearing Dries Van Noten, while the best I can do is Marks and Spencer’s Autograph.’ Although Vince didn’t understand the specifics of this sentence, he understood the implication. It wasn’t the best Wendy could do, it was the best Vince had done on her behalf.
They had reciprocated, rather reluctantly. Wendy had cooked some kind of fancy lamb dish and an even fancier dessert. Thisldo had a poky dining room that was only used on high days and holidays and the Ercol dining table was usually covered with Vince’s paperwork (not any more!), which had to be cleared away. Wendy had fretted uncharacteristically about flowers and ‘tapered dinner candles’ and cloth napkins, all of which Vince had to go and find on his way to a ‘proper’ wine merchant.
In the end, Vince’s verdict was that it was a pleasant enough evening. Sophie had arrived with roses ‘from the garden’ and Steve was clutching a bottle of ‘Dom’, ready chilled, and they managed to avoid politics and religion (although who talked about religion these days?) and when Brexit had momentarily reared its ugly head Vince managed to quash it quickly back down.
Vince tried to focus. Be the ball. He took his shot and chunked it.
‘Keep up, Vince!’ Andy Bragg yelled at him as they hauled their trolleys across the green. ‘Eighteenth’s in sight, last one pays.’
It was a beautiful afternoon. Vince struggled to appreciate it despite the cloud of despondency hanging over him. From here, high up on the cliff, the whole of the town was visible, the castle on the cliff, the sweep of the North Bay. A great blue sky as far as you could see.
‘Makes a man glad to be alive,’ Tommy Holroyd said as he lined his own ball up. He was a good golfer, three under par at the moment. Thwack!
‘Good shot,’ Vince said generously.
And All Things Nice
Crystal was having a fly cigarette in the conservatory. There had been a bake-sale at Candy’s playgroup, they had one every month. It helped to pay for outings and the rent for the church hall. Everyone made something except for Crystal, who doubted that the other mothers would appreciate her ‘vegan zucchini mud cake’ or ‘gluten-free parsnip cup cakes’ – she was a zealous convert to ‘clean eating’. To make up for her perceived shortcomings she bought tons of other people’s sickly offerings and then binned them when she got home or let Candy feed them to the ducks. Crystal felt bad for the ducks, they should be eating pond weed or whatever it was that ducks ate.
Today she had brought home flapjacks, a Victoria sponge, and something labelled as a ‘traybake fluffle slice’. Crystal couldn’t even begin to imagine what that might be. Was ‘fluffle’ even a word? She’d have to ask her stepson, Harry. Whatever it was, it looked figging awful. Crystal had made a massive effort not to swear after Candy was born. There was a whole list of stupid substitutes online. Sugar, fudge, fig, fiddlesticks, crackers. The ‘c’ word – carrots. Yes, she had been on fucking Mumsnet. Figging Mumsnet. There you go, you see – it was hard work retraining yourself. It turned out you could take the girl out of Hull but you couldn’t take Hull out of the woman.
Tommy didn’t think swearing and smoking were ‘ladylike’, although what Tommy knew about ladies could be written on a postage stamp. If he’d wanted a lady perhaps he should have gone shopping for one at a tea dance or a WI meeting or wherever it was you found them, and not in a nail bar in the ailing back streets of a seaside town.
Before she became Mrs Thomas Holroyd, Crystal had clawed her way up, hand over hand, to reach the dizzying heights of nail technician. She had run Nail It! for an owner she never saw. A big gruff bloke called Jason called in every week and, opposite to what would happen in a regular